Polly and Her Pals — 1922-11-22

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* (Hearst, from 1912) is represented here in a 1922 daily strip titled "The Mystery Is Still Unsolved." Four horizontal panels follow two men — one in a cap, one in plaid knickers — conspiring indoors, then stepping outside through a door where a crowd of onlookers waits, the final panel punctuated by a loud CLICK. The gag turns on the paranoid logic of choosing a hiding spot. Sterrett's linework is already showing the bold geometry and fragmented staging that would, by the late 1920s, make *Polly* one of the most formally adventurous strips in syndication. These Hearst and Pulitzer newspaper dailies — with their recurring characters, sequential panels, and integrated speech balloons — are the direct ancestors of the comic book form.